Two Million Envelopes

While checking out at Trader Joe's this morning, I opened my Alexa app to make sure I got all the necessary and asked-for items. One line on my list was unexpected - "two million envelopes." I texted the family chat to see if anyone really needed envelopes, and shook my head at Alexa's spendthrift ways and lack of concern for the environment.

Which of course brings me back to our Italian vacation. European countries have much less space and fewer resources than we have in the US, so they use both more economically and in environmentally friendly ways. In Florence we couldn't find paper products anywhere, and we had to look after spilling red wine on the kitchen table in the VRBO (repeatedly). No napkins, towels, or other wasteful items - only sponges and dishcloths that had permanently changed colors by the time of our departure.

Also a source of amazement - ages-old fountains in certain city squares and taps that perpetually run, offering clean water to anyone stopping by with chapped lips or a reusable water bottle. We filled up at taps all over Venice and even Rome, receiving clean, free water in the middle of the city at sources that were established hundreds (or more) years ago.

Cars are small, streets are small, apartments - you guessed it - small. When Tiziano told us that our VRBO in Venice was his childhood home, we walked around and marveled at how the space could hold an entire family and their (for lack of a better word) household junk. Then we realized that there was no space for household junk - no storage for Christmas decor, baby objects, high school letter jackets, ancient photo albums, and the like. They must have just got rid of all the stuff we accumulate, because there are no public storage spaces for rent in Italy, none that we saw, anyway.

We usually travel abroad with one small roller bag and one backpack per person, so we each got used to traveling with less, wearing the same clothes repeatedly, and eating the food from each apartment before we left it. Because each household in Italy has a maximum amount of electricity they can use per day, we were warned to turn off lights and air conditioning whenever we left the apartment, and not to run too many appliances at the same time. One of our GF restaurants in Rome ran afowl of this provision and we sat through a blackout one night when a few too many watts were demanded of the system.

The Italians we saw live perfectly well with a little less, a sense of limits. In fact, they live better in some ways; they eat better food, have better public transportation, put less stress on the earth and have better fashion sense. Not too many European women walking around in athleisure gear; I had to up my game just to be a tourist!  I came back with a strong desire to get rid of as much as possible, to live bigger while making my footstep a little smaller.

Screen Selection

On my shady walk down to the coffee shop this morning I passed a squirrel with a cookie. The cookie was too large for the beady-eyed fellow but he was undaunted and half-rolled, half-toothed his cookie across the yard and under a tree, where he wisely stood guard. (He must have heard about my sugar addiction.) I felt like a lucky little rodent myself, huddled away in the basement of a funky coffee shop – Hooked on Colfax if anyone local is reading – with free time and space to type out some thoughts on my computer. The kids are safe and busy in morning camp at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science where they are hopefully engaged in studies of weather, pirates and chemical reactions.

It’s a shock to return to daily life after a fun- and family-filled vacation, and I am overwhelmed by the task of keeping the kids occupied and away from the screens that fill our house. On vacation their TV time was severely limited, both by their preference (more fun to play with cousins) and by our busy schedule. I was so impressed when we met up with family friends on Martha’s Vineyard; they have had their beach house in the family since 1981 and it has never had a TV. My dream summer home! The Museum camp is helping our trio stay busy this week, but when we get home, though I limit their official ‘screen time’ (TV shows and video games), they find ways to amuse themselves with our funky streaming photo frame, their Flip videos, their kid camera, my phone, etc.

Rob ordered a new phone for me while we were on vacation, and it’s a funky, touchy thing. It’s pretty and cool-looking and I have no idea how to use it. My five-year-old son already has his eyes on it, though, especially one app. Last night when Rob was showing me the new functions and games he installed on the phone he mentioned “Angry Birds” and a little head suddenly popped up – two black eyes sparkling over the back of the couch. “Angry Birds?” yelled my son. “Who has Angry Birds? Can I see it? Can I play it?” Rob laughed and I shuddered – I’ve never played that game but my sons and their cousin played it on the car rides and during airport waits on our trip, emerging quite addicted. I put Daniel off by leaving (with my phone) and this morning by saying that mommy did not know how to use the game, but I can tell from his hourly requests that I am doomed.

The first game I plan on learning is ‘Words with Friends,’ that super-cool Scrabble-like game that has hooked Rob, my sister, and my Dad. I definitely need the practice against my husband as our current record at word games (primarily Scrabble) is approximately: Rob 58, Laura 1. I kid you not . . .my English degree falls to his Engineering degrees every time. My siblings and significant others became painfully aware of Rob’s Scrabble prowess on vacation, when he decimated the field by 100 points and made himself quite unpopular around the game table.

So through the course of this posting I have become aware that we are all under the sway of screens. I’m hooked on my writing and email and now “Words with Friends” no less than the kids are under the power of their cameras and ‘Angry Birds’ games. I’m not sure what this promises for our collective future, but I promise to give up my phone games – as soon as I’ve beaten Rob at Scrabble.

Wild Montana Skies

Each morning at our rental house in West Yellowstone we were awakened by a pair of trumpeter swans which flew directly overhead, emitting their odd call as they passed. The kids, waking up to the whoosh of wings and the trumpets, named the birds "Alarm" and "Cluck." On a morning in a middle of the week I also heard the unearthly bellows of an elk bugling in the woods not far away; the odd brass section of elk and swan echoed along the ridge and mesmerized me. Ten days in Montana also brought multiple bald eagle and bison sightings, encounters with plenty of geothermal marvels, and an unforgettable canoe trip down the Missouri River.

On our last day of vacation we took our two oldest children down the river in canoes; I piloted with our daughter aboard and Rob captained the vessel with our older son. Both paddled well, though still struggling a bit to get the oar in the water at the proper depth and over the edge of the boat without clunking their arms or torquing their small bodies. As they weigh substantially less than we do, the front of the boat could act like a sail, catching the wind and blowing ceaselessly to the shallows. Needless to say, it was a good workout for the adults in the family, and that was before the wind picked up and the lightning flashed in the distance.

As the storm rapidly bent down on us, my husband called for our trio of boats (his brother and girlfriend were also with us) to get off the water. With some difficulty I made to join them; it is hard to steer and paddle with storm blow against you! My daughter and I left paddles, socks and water bottles aboard the canoe, dragged it out of the water and went to join the rest of our team in a make-shift tent. We had a tarp which we anchored in between the other two canoes and underneath the rippling, crackling tarp we stayed mainly dry. The kids' eyes went wide as saucers and they teetered between glee and fright. The needle tipped to fright when my husband and his brother peeked out of the tarp to see our third canoe blow right out into the river - and flip over. "We've lost it!" yelled my brother-in-law, and my daughter burst into tears. "My socks!" she said.

I assured her that we could buy more socks, and we played "I made a cake but I made a mistake . . ." while their dad went abroad in the storm to find the canoe and bring it back, if he could. As the wind died down we felt better, though I battled with my worry about Rob outside in the rain and lightning. (This happened ten years before at the same family reunion, though upriver, and he had stood beneath the river cottonwood trees during the storm. We all thought he would be crushed by falling branches, but he didn't move. Stubborn, for sure).

In the end, the canoe was recovered with the help of a kayak in our larger party, and Rob half paddled, half dragged it more than half-mile upriver back to our hiding spot, where the storm was finally ending. With glee we resumed our journey, even spotting a final bald eagle in the last hour. The canoe trip put an underline to my thought for the week; being out in the park and the big sky areas of Montana makes me feel small, and that feeling is not unwelcome. It's a relief to recognize how little control we actually have in this world; the best we can do is prepare like crazy and then go with the flow. I need to carry this thought, and this feeling into other areas of my life. At home, in my house, where a storm might bring a power failure but little else, we rule as demigods and then are surprised when things don't go our way. Outside in more untamed parts we are reminded that Nature has the upper hand.

Something to keep in mind as we head up to camp at 10,000 feet this weekend and hike a 14,000 foot mountain - I'll let you know how that goes.

A people fast

"There is a great need today to learn to fast from people. Most of us have a tendency to devour others and usually we get severe heartburn from it." - Richard Foster, Freedom of Simplicity p175

Having just returned from a joy - full family vacation to San Diego, I find my mind returning to this quote – a favorite. Over the past eight days I overindulged in food - a prerequisite of vacation - and folks. Creating sunshine-bathed memories of beaches, zoos, SeaWorld, LegoLand and relatives certainly fulfilled me and my husband. Watching the children scamper from one miraculous new experience to another, feeling the warmth and light on my face while Denver suffered through a 50-hour snowstorm that brought 2 feet of the white stuff to our back porch – well, we are extremely lucky people.

Can you sense the big “however” coming? The flip side of full days and busy children are tired, whiny hours in the late afternoon and evening, a dearth of naps for the 3-year-old and a complete absence of free time for mom and dad. As the week progressed I felt my internal strings tighten and twang with each late-afternoon temper tantrum; I looked at my unread book with longing, and managed to record only four or five sentences in my journal.

As wrinkles line up to decorate my face I crave free time and quiet more than diamonds, more than chocolate, almost more than a workout (cheating - is actually free time!). It seems that the only way to refill my store of energy is to take time to sort through my thoughts and emotions, take deep breaths, and indulge flights of fancy and occasionally philosophy. In the one evening I did find time to read my book, I came across this revealing quote:

“Wasn’t it terrible that after all the work one put into finding a person to spend one’s life with, after making a family with that person, even in spite of missing that person, as Amit missed Megan night after night, that solitude was what one relished most, the only thing that, even in fleeting diminished doses, kept one sane?” - From “A Choice of Accommodations,” Jhumpa Lahiri in Unaccustomed Earth, (Vintage Contemporaries, 2008).

When I read this paragraph I knew in my bones that Ms. Lahiri was a parent as well as an accomplished writer (true - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhumpa_Lahiri). The joys of solitude are hard to appreciate when one is single, with solitude to spare, or when a couple is childless, with ordered home and rooms of silence. After spending a charged week with three children and a spouse that I love dearly and would, in fact, die for, I am enjoying a spellbinding morning by myself, appreciating the time with my family only in the bas-relief of my time alone.

In contrast, the one thought I managed to record in my journal over our vacation was a sentence about the movie “Into the Wild” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild). I watched the film the night before we left for San Diego and it moved me deeply. The protagonist, a gifted young man named Christopher McCandless, flees a painful past and constrictions of modern society through an epic road trip, and finally, a dramatic stay in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilds. The recorded description of the film – which I read prior to watching - notes that the young man’s trip is doomed, so I watched scene after scene, increasingly enthralled with the young man and ever more reluctant to watch his demise. Toward the end of the film, McCandless writes in his own journal (which was recovered by moose hunters) something to the effect that happiness is only worthwhile when shared. He comes to the realization too late to share the joy of new experiences with friends and loved ones, and forfeits the opportunity to reattempt his life with this new lens.

As with anything in life, then, balance would seem to represent the key to peace. Time spent with loved ones, sharing new thoughts and experiences and giving of oneself, balanced by time alone in meditation and reflection. These are not new thoughts, but as I process the reality of life with three children, pursuing a path to peace and self-mastery, the awareness feels new every day, immensely valuable and precious.